'Svengali' actress Marsh Henderson dies

The Washington Post

Published Monday, November 13, 2006

Marian Marsh, 93, a film star of the 1930s, died of respiratory arrest Nov. 9 at her home in Palm Desert, Calif. In her heyday, she was described as "the perfect storybook heroine (whose) innocence, delicate beauty and vulnerability made an audience want to protect her from the lascivious, lustful fiends who were drawn to her." She was 93.

Onscreen, Marsh convincingly portrayed victims of the great leading men of the period. Edward G. Robinson, playing a tabloid editor, makes her life miserable in "Five Star Final," and John Barrymore as the title character in "Svengali" hypnotizes her Trilby (both 1931).

Barrymore, as a club-footed puppeteer, went after her again in "The Mad Genius" (1931), and Boris Karloff, playing good and evil twins, had a yen for her in "The Black Room" (1935). The actress portraying her backwoods mother menaced her in "A Girl of the Limberlost" (1934), which Marsh regarded as her favorite picture.

The qualities that made her in one critic's eyes "bewitching" as Trilby were increasingly absent in the more than 40 films she made until her retirement in 1942.

Violet Ethelred Krauth was born Oct. 17, 1913, in Trinidad, in the West Indies, where her German-born father was a chocolate manufacturer. "When World War I knocked the bottom out of his market, my father moved us to Boston," she later said.

Her career was otherwise erratic. Amid many pictures of middling quality, she showed some flair as a precocious love interest of seducer William Powell in "The Road to Singapore" (1931) and the efficient secretary to Warren William in "Beauty and the Boss" (1932).

In 1934, she made films in England and Germany. The most intriguing was "The Prodigal Son" as the love interest of mountaineer Luis Trenker. The film was distinguished mostly by its location shooting in the Alps.

After her last picture -- "House of Errors" with sad-faced comedian Harry Langdon -- Marsh remained a vibrant fixture on Hollywood's social scene. At parties, she said, composers Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin sought her advice on how their lyrics would appeal to young music-buyers.

In the late 1930s, she married stockbroker Albert Scott, the ex-husband of screen star Colleen Moore, and had two children before divorcing. In 1960, she married Clifford Henderson, a developer and founder of the National Air Races.

Henderson died in 1984.

Marsh's two children survive, along with eight grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.